Chinese dog meat festival

[_huckelberry]

A dog will adopt you as one of the family. They may also just adopt you as a friend. I remember an occasion when I was to meet a friend out in the country and our timing was a bit off. I was waiting on the steps when the neighbor dog came by and said lets go on a walk. He led me about the area pausing at a good view point then back to where we met. It feels a bit awkward to think about eating a friend.

[_moksha]

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A professor at a San Francisco Bay Area community college has been put on leave after asking a Vietnamese-American student to “Anglicize” her name because it sounds like a vulgarity in English, school officials confirmed.

Laney College President Tammeil Gilkerson said that as soon as campus leaders learned of the comments, an unnamed faculty member was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, the East Bay Times reported.

Freshman Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen told KGO-TV last week that on her second day of classes at the college in Oakland, she received an email from her trigonometry professor, Matthew Hubbard, asking her to use a different name.

[_ajax18]

Stereotypes exist for a reason. Where else in the world do you have dog farms but Asia?

[_Temp. Admin.]

Hi moksha,

What does your post have to do with the subject matter of the thread?

[_moksha]

Hi moksha,

What does your post have to do with the subject matter of the thread?

A meat festival got me thinking about a nice bowl of pho. That let me to the refrigerator to get a Diet Coke and when I got back to the computer I noticed that article. Mr. Rube Goldberg encouraged me to post it and the rest, as they say, is history.

A bit earlier this year China prohibited wild game sales and classified dogs as wild game. However, markets are still allowed to sell pheasants. For many years dog meat has been considered a delicacy in China, so this move by the CCP is bound to upset some. It would be analogous to those Yankees coming in and telling the citizens of Alabama that they had to give up roadkill.

[_Chap]

Frankly, dogs are tolerable if dull eating (I've had some, with onions and ginger on a cold winter's day, the right season for such a dish; the seasonings made most of the taste)

Haaaa.. Good one, Chap. Ha ha. So funny. *wipes tear* Ha. Legend.

No joke intended. I went out to dinner with a bunch of local friends in a high-class restaurant in an East Asian capital some years ago, on an evening in (I think) December. Dog was one of a wide range of dishes on the menu, and my friends suggested that in view of the season, we might try it. As an eating experience, it was pretty well as I said.

Many moons ago before Camp Humphreys, located in the Republic of Korea, expanded its footprint there was a dog farm located along the perimeter fence where we would often have to run. Some mornings were spent silently jogging past the farm as the screams of dogs being tortured and slaughtered echoed throughout the cool air. It was absolutely gut wrenching, and did very little for our cultural relationships with the local population.

All animals with enough awareness to know what is going on make a lot of noise when they are being killed while conscious, and in many cases they give voice to their terror at the sight (and smell) of other animals being killed. There is nothing special about dogs. Pigs, which live in groups that often have strong social bonds (if their living conditions allow it) are terrified when the killing starts. Here is a short recording of their screams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GQyv48pMiA

As I said:

Frankly, I suggest we give up discussing the moral edibility of animals based on whether they wag their tails at us and lick our faces. An animal's right to life does not depend on whether they have been bred to be nice to humans. Eat one, eat them all (if they taste good, of course).

Oh, by the way, I eat animals. I prefer them to be killed humanely, though, with minimum fear and pain when possible.

[_ajax18]

Oh, by the way, I eat animals. I prefer them to be killed humanely, though, with minimum fear and pain when possible.

I've heard the meat is not good when you really piss a pig or steer off before killing it. I'm not sure why evolution would select that.

Is dog the preferred meat in Asia or is it just a meat of last resort? I know they don't have the space we have for cattle ranches or free range pigs that I loved raising in WV. Do they just end up with a lot of strays then go round them up?

[_Some Schmo]

I've heard the meat is not good when you really piss a pig or steer off before killing it. I'm not sure why evolution would select that.

Really?

If you are tasty dead, aren't other animals more likely to want to eat you, thereby lowing your chances of survival before reproduction?

Doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me.

[_Some Schmo]

Frankly, I suggest we give up discussing the moral edibility of animals based on whether they wag their tails at us and lick our faces. An animal's right to life does not depend on whether they have been bred to be nice to humans. Eat one, eat them all (if they taste good, of course).

Yeah, I struggle often with the ethics of eating animals. I still do eat meat, but I can't help but think what I'm doing represents a barely concealed blind spot of mine.

So yeah, I go through bouts of vegetarianism. We've been doing a lot of grilling lately, so we've been eating more meat, but grilled veggies are also awesome. I don't really have any excuses. I do think of pigs and cows in the same light as dogs: they are conscious animals with emotional states and a memory. It's hard to justify their slaughter for our sustenance when there is so much unconscious vegetation to eat.

Threads like this make me feel genuine guilt about eating animals.

[_Chap]

Is dog the preferred meat in Asia or is it just a meat of last resort?

People in East Asia who from time to time ate dog meat in recent centuries tended to do so by choice, because it was something of a delicacy and was thought to have health-giving properties. It was not an everyday dish; overwhelmingly, when people say 'meat' in China they meant pork.

I know they don't have the space we have for cattle ranches or free range pigs that I loved raising in West Virginia.

Chinese people have never had any problem in raising pigs. Of course as prosperity increases people have started to eat a lot more meat - hence the demands for imports. And don't forget that China is very big and varied in climate and type of vegetation; in the north there are extensive grasslands.

Do they just end up with a lot of strays then go round them up?

Nope. China has a complex and rich traditional cuisine, and dining out with friends and family has long been an important part of life. If a restaurant is one of the relatively rare ones that serve dog, its customers would be horrified to find that they were eating dogs off the street - just as were the customers of a London restaurant specialising in pigeon dishes, which closed down when it was found they were being supplied by a man who caught pigeons around Trafalgar Square.

Please make allowance for the arbitrariness of culture. An observant Jew or Muslim will look at a pig on a farm and feel sick to their stomach at the idea of eating such a disgusting animal; I suspect that you (like me) would not feel good about eating horse - but although they are now out of fashion, there were once lots of 'boucheries chevalines' in France. You would not eat a dog, but (unlike some cultures who regard dogs as unclean) you would be happy to have one running around your house. By the way, one factor that is active in decreasing dog-eating in East Asia is the increasing number of people who keep dogs as pets, and hence come to think of them as 'too human' to eat.

Now if only pigs (intelligent and not unfriendly creatures, and inoffensive if allowed to live naturally) could win pet status, they'd be just fine ...